This
is another ArtHaus DVD dedicated to choreographer Jiří Kylián
(b. 1947) and his extensive work with the Nederlands Dans
Theater. I truly appreciate Kylián’s creations and some
of his choreographies are among my favourites. He is original
and innovative, always questioning and challenging, at
times nearly shocking, in his search for new dance values.
The DVD contains a film he made in 2006, in collaboration
with Dutch writer/director Boris Paval Conen, entitled Car
Men, and two ballets.

Car
Men derives its name from Bizet’s famous opera Carmen and in the
same way as in Bizet’s work, the central character is
a woman, the eternal temptress but also a tragic figure.
The story runs along the same lines as the well known
plot of the opera, only here we are not dealing with
smugglers, soldiers and bullfighters but with four ordinary
people: the four basic characters of Bizet’s opera: Carmen,
Don José, Escamillo and Micaëla who have something to
do with cars, which is why the title of the film is Car
Men. However, Kylián distances himself from the traditional
story, depicting surreal relationships of love and hatred,
set in a disused coal mine. Why these people are there
and do what they do is never quite clear. Kylián pictures
the fight for strength and supremacy between Carmen and
the other three characters in a succession of burlesque
scenes that culminate in a car race in cars made from
abandoned scrap. The film is entirely in black and white
and done in the style and rhythm of a Laurel and Hardy
silent, with a cartoon-like quality in some of the scenes,
as for example when Carmen is flattened by a strange
vehicle made of the various bits of scrap metal. When
one thinks she is dead, she gets up, leaving a perfect
mark of her body on the ground, and runs down the road.
In speeding up part of the film, in rejecting colour
and creating a silent piece, Kylián reveals a certain
nostalgia for a long gone era at the birth of cinema.
He makes good use of the mimic powers and expressive
gestures of his dancers, the older members of NDT III,
all well over the usual age for dancers, as they are
all clearly middle-aged. Kylián returns here to his eternal
theme of the confrontation between human beings whose
lives are somehow bound up together, and combines it
with another of his favourite topics, the passage of
time, as a secondary theme. Personally, I do not think
he achieved what he set out to do and I fail to see this
film as a dance-piece. The gestures of the protagonists
and their facial expressions are very effective and well
set to the score of the film but their significance does
not always come across. The music is a collage of Bizet’s
opera Carmen, heavily fragmented, often speeded
up and mixed with other sounds, which one cannot always
identify. Carmen’s Seguidilla, Escamillo’s opening
area, Toreador, and the bullfighter’s march are
just about recognisable but I have to say that while
watching it, I longed for the real music and for a slightly
more traditional approach to dance. It brought to mind
Matthew Bourne’s take on Bizet’s opera, The Car Man,
which I personally found also innovative but not so extreme
and more satisfying from a music and dance perspective.

Car
Men is not Jiří Kylián’s sole experiment with the style of silent
movies. In 2001, he created Birth-day, also for
the older dancers in the company, set to the music of
Mozart and although it is difficult to look at the piece
as ballet – again it is more a silent movie but this
time in colour – it is an effective, perfectly timed
piece, simultaneously tragic, amusing and humorous, which
brings a similar message across but to my mind in a more
gratifying manner.

The
other two pieces on this DVD are the short ballets: Silent
Cries set to Debussy’s music Prélude à l’après-midi
d’un faune and La Cathédrale engloutie (The
Sunken Cathedral) again set to Debussy’s music of the same
name. These two pieces, in particular the second, are Jiří Kylián
at his best.

The
choreography to Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune bears
no similarity to the one by Nijinsky, which caused a scandal
in its time. Kylián created the piece in 1986 for his wife,
dancer Sabine Kupferberg, as way of expressing her beauty,
her weaknesses and her doubts to quote the choreographer’s
own words. Kupferberg was at the height of her powers and
wonderfully expresses the theme of the piece: what is going
on inside an individual when he or she looks into his or
her soul; are people able to accept themselves for what
they truly are when they have the courage of completing
such a profound, intimate analysis of their personality.
Kupferberg’s interpretation of Kylián’s choreography is
moving and deeply felt. He meant it as a tribute to her
and she undoubtedly does full justice to his creation.
The choice of Debussy’s music Prélude à l’après-midi
d’un faune was inspired, as his use of flutes and harp
enhances the introspective quality of Kylián’s dance language.

The
final ballet La Cathédrale engloutie, is a quartet
for two pairs dominated by the sound of waves. The original
music is a prelude composed by Debussy in 1910, inspired
by the ancient Breton legend of the submerged cathedral
of the village of Ys, which sank under the waves during
one stormy night, as punishment for its sinful population.
The choreography of this piece is one of Kylián’s finest.
The dancers swirl in a seamless connection with the music,
sliding to the ground, only to rise again, in liquid, fluid
movements that appear to be an extension of the waves we
hear and the images of water in the background. The pairs
collide, rotate and slowly swell, with grace and elegance,
as sea waves, rolling to the beach and spreading harmoniously
over the sand. It is a piece of great beauty and originality,
combining the delicate basis of classical ballet with the
emotive, powerful expression of modern dance. The sounds
of the waves are very effective, evocative and at the same
time peaceful but sadly Debussy’s music is not fully used.
We hear the waves throughout, occasionally broken by some
chords of the composer’s original prelude on the piano
but the piece is not performed in its entirety.

These
two ballets, however, are excellent and representative
of Kylián’s earlier choreographic ideas that to my mind
are still his best, and more than made up for the disappointment
I felt after watching the film Car Men.

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